German Psychiatrists’ Observation and Interpretation of Religiosity/Spirituality

Table 3

Psychiatrists’ observations and interpretations of the influence of ReS on patients’ health.

Questionnaire Items^a	Analysis
	Mean^b	Correlation with intrinsic religiosity^c,d
Mention of religiosity/spirituality
Patients mentioned ReS issues such as God, prayer, meditation, the Bible, and so forth.	2.96 ± 0.68	0.225*
Positive influence of religiosity/spirituality
The influence of ReS on health is generally positive.	3.14 ± 0.73	0.418***
ReS helps patients to cope with and endure illness.	3.52 ± 0.61	0.388***
Patients have received emotional or practical support from their religious community.	3.20 ± 0.71	0.229*
ReS gives patients a positive, hopeful state of mind.	3.34 ± 0.63	0.374***
ReS helps patients to prevent “hard” medical outcomes like death via suicide.	3.11 ± 0.75	0.301**
Suffering from an illness often leads patients to ReS.^e	2.84 ± 0.65	0.073
Negative influence of religiosity/spirituality
ReS leads patients to refuse, delay, or stop medically indicated therapy.	2.25 ± 0.63	−0.301**
Patients used ReS as a reason to avoid taking responsibility for their own health.	2.13 ± 0.62	−0.337**

aPreceded by “considering your experience….”
^bResponse categories are 1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often, and 5 = always.
^cCorrelation between the sum of psychiatrists’ own intrinsic religiosity scores and their response to the items.
^dSpearman’s correlation (1 tailed): ***𝑃<0.001, **𝑃<0.01, *𝑃<0.05.
^eIn the original questionnaire, this item asked whether “religiosity/spirituality causes guilt, anxiety, or other negative emotions that lead to increased patient suffering” and belonged to the category: negative influence. Based on comments from the respondents of the pilot study and other comments from a professional team, this question was replaced by the item “Suffering from an illness often leads patients to religiosity/spirituality.”